Welcome back to the planet of Esperanza.
It's been a while, but the aliens haven't forgotten about us. We left off just prior to a recovery mission, going for a crashed battlecruiser.
It took me a while, as I played this mission slowly and carefully as opposed to just rushing in headlong and getting everyone killed.
Despite this caution, two of our soldiers took wounds. 5 soldiers were promoted however, marking this as one of our best missions in a long time.
Draco, Lightbane, Artricia, NewBee and Eklektyk are all promoted. Eklektyk to the esteemed rank of Warrant Officer!
Once this mission was finished, we experienced a period of relative peace on Esperanza, allowing our researchers to dig in and try and impress us.
Inferno tech promises new methods of incinerating our enemies.
It won't mean new aircraft weapons however, so we'll have to be content with crisping the xenos with handheld weaponry. M:
Mhmmm.. Death in a handy package. We will be making these shortly.
When I said it was relatively peaceful, that doesn't mean the aliens had lost all interest in us. Especially not our Seathopia base..
Undaunted, our researchers put the finishing touches on two more spaceship components. I will start building these as soon as I'm content with the loadout of our response team. Which will probably not be for a couple more months.
Seathopia is retaken, and The Thin Man II is promoted.
This little sucker provides 4 times the protection of the basic shield, yet only weighs 60% more. We'll need to make a bunch of these ASAP.
And I really should have wrapped up research on this Telemat as quickly as was humanly possible, as finishing this research project opened up a better armour!
We will need to research it before we can build it, but I suspec the Waspkeeper will be much, much better than the Beekeeper.
Before we do anything however, the end of the month is upon us. We're doing well, but we need to take into account that we haven't built anything of note in our workshops for most of September 2108, as we're waiting for the advanced workshops to be finished.
Hm. I misremembered. This is the retaking Seathopia mission.. No matter, it was relatively easily done, and we got three promotions. Kudos to The Thin Man II, Artricia and Newbee!
As expected, the Waspkeeper is really promising. We immediately start building 20 of these.
More 'splosives are researched. The EEEW grenades are never found but can be produced. The stasis grenades however are found and can therefore be looted. I see no sensible reason to start production of the EEEW grenades, and I immediately arm our grenadiers with some stasis grenades.
A better chemical grenade is developed, but the "advanced chemical warfare" research topic that was unlocked has me waiting before I commission more chemical grenades. Possibly there's an even more powerful iteration to be had.
Rockets. They look pretty, but I'm not going to bother. M:
You'd think this would be a prerequisite to any and all rooms designed for the centaurus spaceship, wouldn't you? Never mind, it's been developed, and now we can make sure the centaurus doesn't collapse the first time a micro-meteorite impacts on it.
A UFO scout is shot down and recovered, and Canus is promoted.
Oh, how I've waited for this message.
The tech team improves on the stasis grenade by fitting a proximity sensor and boosting the blast damage.
Here we see Eklektyk, fitted with the first Waspkeeper suit, and his jetpack replaced by the personal antigravity device. Massive
We need to start making these, as the preacher mental assault seems quite more potent than that of the hallucinoid. It's quite annoying, not to say potentially lethal, to have your point men freeze in their tracks..
We ramp up the chemical warfare.
I'm quite happy with my decision not to start production of the chemical grenade mark II.
What happened here was that The Thin Man II spotted an alien, shot it twice with an EEEW rifle yet failed to kill it, then was killed in return by the reaction fire.
Shot and killed by a chaser.
I just hope the third iteration of The Thin Man line does better..
This armour I won't be producing. It is only marginally better against mechanical damage (100 compared to 90) and decidedly worse against fire and chemical. I don't see the point of this armour to be blunt..
The stun grenade mark II does indeed boast twice the stopping power of the mark I.
A production line is started immediately.
Now, we take a look at the current roster.
DamnedRegistrations is a regular on the team. His skill with grenades is valued, but it's his amount of timeunits that buys him a place in the aircraft. He can run ahead, spot the enemies, then run back to safety while the rest of the team snipes the baddies. Cheap, but effective. When that's said though, he's still killed 39 aliens with his grenades.
korenzel is our second grenadier and carries the important alien life-detector. This device marks all hostiles on the minimap, lessening the risk of falling into an ambush. korenzel also boasts an impressive amounts of timeunits (actionpoints), and has racked up an impressive 62 kills.
Lightbane has a relatively poor maximum shooting accuracy of 91, and a similar reaction score, which is why I haven't used him more. Still, 23 kills is not to be sneezed at.
Draco hasn't reached his maximum shooting accuracy yet and only boasts 3 kills. His poor strength does not allow him to carry any shields at all into missions. He can just hope to get enough xp to boost his accuracy to the maximum, then build his strength a bit.
anus_pounder the third has a very nice shooting accuracy and reaction score both. Despite only having participated in a relatively low number of missions, she has 17 kills to her name.
Artricia. 96 shooting, 97 reactions. 13 kills. Oddly, it pays to be a latecomer, as I only hire soldiers that come with already decent scores, meaning they have higher potential end-scores.
Storyfag. 93 shooting accuracy, 92 reactions. Not too impressive scores, yet he's managed not to die yet, and has racked up 76 kills!
Drakron. 97 accuracy, 98 reactions. 82 kills. He's a machine, and he's been issued a Waspkeeper suit.
Desmodus Rotundus the second. 96/99, yet only 43 kills. He's also a latecomer, but he's a regular on the team now with those stats.
Canus has 99 shooting accuracy, and his reaction score is yet not maxed out. 9 kills, but that's bound to change rapidly.
NewBee, 97/96. 26 kills. She's managed to bring down an impressive amount of enemies in a very short time and has a decent amount of timeunits to boost, so she's one of the front-line people and have been issued with one of our auto-docs and an eternal personal shield.
Eklektyk. 97/96. 103 kills. His last promotion saw him improving on his timeunits, which were his only weak point. This is the soldier our rookies aspire to emulate. Like NewBee, he has an eternal shield and an autodoc, but he also has the teams first personal anti-gravity device, and the distortion field making him 25% less likely to be hit by enemy fire. We take care of our valued personnel.
Black only boasts an 88 on accuracy, meaning he's left off the plane if anyone with better accuracy is available. Yet, he's managed to kill 69 aliens so far, a fact that demands respect.
dextermorgan the third is a fresh rookie. We have yet to see him in action and his potential is so far unknown. I expect him to potentially be a better shot than Black, the question is if he'll live to prove this.
Pope Amole. 93/88, 20 kills. I admit I haven't been using the Pope as much as I could have. His sub-par reactions is part of the explanation. For much of the first part of the game, he was the one lugging around the rocket-launcher, which also accounts for some of the explanation. Yet, his services merit respect.
Donaroriak, one of our grenadiers. He's still carrying around chemical grenades, as we've yet to recover enough stasis grenades to fully equip 3 grenadiers. Also, I find that with our current tech-level, 2 grenadiers is enough, so Donaroriak has been spending quite a bit of time in RR. Still, 7 kills.
Sov. Worthless piece of .... Insisting on being a pacificist, he's only issued with stun weaponry. The 1 kill he has isn't a true kill. It was a stunned chaser. Once we have a stockpile of mark 2 stun grenades, I might bring him along. Then again, I might not.
Yet, I won't have him feel completely left out, so this is for you
Finally, the third iteration of The Thin Man line. He has a nice base accuracy of 45, promising to improve nicely. And base strength and reactions are also impressive. He will be given a chance to prove his worth.
You may have noticed that I've issued EEEW rifles to all ranged attackers. With the new workshops online, we have no problem producing the ammo, and the extra damage potential is sorely needed when facing trilobytes. And since we're also looting more rifles in almost every mission, I saw no reason to stint.
